


lover boy

by andnowforyaya



Series: camera boy [10]
Category: B.A.P, K-pop
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - College/University, Aromantic, Drugs, Gen, Identity Issues, M/M, POV Second Person, Self-Esteem Issues, Underage Drinking, references to casual sex, rough consensual sex, sex under the influence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-23
Updated: 2014-04-25
Packaged: 2018-01-20 12:48:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1511105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andnowforyaya/pseuds/andnowforyaya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Youngjae has never fallen in love and he's pretty sure that's not going to change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey. Hi. This is told in second person. Sorry if that bothers you; I know that's not everyone's thing. _Lover Boy_ takes place before events in the rest of the _camera boy_ series, and explores Youngjae. I didn't want to leave him without his own story, so here we go.
> 
> Also thank you to [saxophonic](http://archiveofourown.org/users/saxophonic/pseuds/saxophonic) for helping - for asking insightful, important questions! You are amazing.

You start falling in notlove with Daehyun on the second day of college, in your shared Intro to Music Theory class, which turns out to be in a giant freshman lecture hall with stadium seating, always only halfway filled or less. Daehyun raises his hand on the second day and asks a question that stumps the professor for a moment, and you think:

_Interesting._

His English is cute - lightly accented and curved at the ends, like his voice is smiling, like maybe he’s a transplant from South Korea who grew up in Korea Town in the states, never quite needing to rely on English to get by. (This is confirmed, though much later).

It is notlove but also not-lust because you have a track record; you are four-and-oh and on the losing side; your relationships always end with:

_Why aren’t you taking this seriously?_

_Why don’t you want to fight for me?_

_Why don’t you love me the way I love you?_

You aren’t sure. Sometime between the third and fourth relationship, you decided love was just something you didn’t understand, like advanced physics. You could see the formulas and the resulting curves and slopes but you couldn’t form them, couldn’t create them yourself. Your partners always wanted more from you, wanted something you weren’t sure how to provide - you loved them, in your own way, but it was never enough.

So, maybe you hooked up with a lot of people, after that realization. At basement parties, behind the bowling alley back home, in fogged up cars. Hooking up is easy. Hooking up, you understand.

So, Daehyun.

He’s standing by the door after class as the other students file out, digging the toe of his shoe into the carpet, and when you walk by him, he jumps, startling, before following your tail.

“Hi,” he says. “Hello. I’m Daehyun.”

He says his name the way a native speaker would say it. There’s just a slight difference - it’s in the lift of the tongue and shape of the mouth.

“Okay,” you say, because he’s being weird, following you around. He skips forward to keep pace with you, his backpack bouncing against his butt.

“You’re Korean, right?” Daehyun asks, with wide eyes.

“Yeah,” you say. You purse your lips at him. There are plenty of other Korean students in your lecture, and you don’t know why he’s singled you out.

“You look like you take good notes,” Daehyun says, shameless.

You’re wearing your glasses. You have on a plaid flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up to your elbows, and slim jeans and black sneakers. You don’t look like anything. You look like a student, maybe, with your own messenger bag hitting the side of your hip.

“I just - I’m worried because the professor speaks really quickly and I won’t be able to catch everything. Could we share? I can - I can help you with something else?”

He looks eager, his body vibrating with energy. You realize you have both stopped in the courtyard, and there are students milling around you, trying to get to their next classes. He can’t seem to stand still. He has his bottom lip between his teeth and his eyes are huge and the look he gives you punches you right in the gut.

You want to spread your hands around his narrow waist and press him into the ground.

“I’ll think about it,” you say, careful not to sound too enthusiastic, and he beams at you, his smile blinding.

“Okay, thanks. Thank you! I have to get to my next class, but I’ll see you later.” He waves as he turns to go, and you blink, because you had been looking at his lips, and you had wanted to kiss them.

.

You meet some people. It’s college, after all. Everyone is new. Groups form, and you don’t really fit anywhere. This one guy in your world history class named Jaebum seems decent, as uninterested in the subject as you are, and you exchange numbers at the end of class, figuring it can’t hurt. You go to a party with him over the weekend. It’s fun, and you drink, and you kiss someone in the bathroom until the knocking on the door gets annoying, but you leave alone and you don’t regret it, fumbling with your key card and silently creeping back into your own room, trying not to wake your roommate.

You don’t see Daehyun again until your next Intro to Music Theory class - the lectures are once a week in addition to a shorter study group session with a smaller group of your peers - and he doesn’t notice you at first, because his head is ducked, eyes intent on the screen of the phone the girl next to him is showing him. You walk over to them, squeezing past a string of students in the row of seats and hover before him, shifting on your feet.

“She’s so cute!” Daehyun is saying to the phone. “Wow, I love her hair. It really suits her. I mean, yours suits you, too, but. I just. It’s great!” He reaches over and touches the girl’s black hair.

The girl looks up. She has a small, round face and eyes shaped like almonds. Her hair is short and styled with a severe side part, one side shaved. “Can I help you?” she says to you, and you clear your throat.

Daehyun looks up, too. “Oh!” he says. His face changes when he smiles like that - you are reminded of those lucky cats in display windows of Asian supermarkets back home, their faces scrunched up, their eyes crescents. “It’s you.”

You realize you never told him your name. “Youngjae,” you say.

“Youngjae,” he repeats, still smiling. “Sit with me. With us. Amber was just showing me pictures of her girlfriend back home.”

You sit. Amber’s nostrils flare, waiting for you to respond. You say, “Oh? Where’s home?” and she visibly relaxes.

“California,” she says.

“Me too,” you say. “San Francisco.”

“Arcadia,” she says.

“Los Angeles!” Daehyun says excitedly. “Oh, but I guess we don’t live there anymore. My parents moved back to Korea when I got into school.”

Daehyun asks after your week. You tell him that classes were all right, that people were all right. In general, you felt all right about this whole college thing. It would probably get better, right?

Amber says, “Jeez, are you always like this?” but Daehyun looks at you and you think he gets it, you think he understands what you’re trying to say. It’s been so long since you’ve cared about anything, that it’s hard to break the habit.

He says, “It’s hard believing you made the right choice, coming here, right?”

You say, “Exactly.”

The professor sets up and the auditorium quiets. Daehyun looks at you until the professor’s voice makes him break away to pay attention, and soon enough you look over and Daehyun is asleep against Amber’s shoulder. You feel yourself smiling at the sight.

She happens to catch you looking, and smirks.

.

There isn’t a mad rush to get out of the auditorium this time, since mostly everyone knows where they are going now, so you and Amber tap Daehyun awake and you suggest coffee before the next class, as Daehyun stretches in his seat, his shirt riding up and exposing a thin sliver of skin at his hips.

“That sounds good,” he mumbles.

“Thanks, but I can’t,” Amber says. “My next class is on the other side of campus, practically. I need to run.”

She does, and then it’s just you and Daehyun moseying down the stairs to the exit. He hooks his elbow into yours, casual, and yawns.

“Amber and her girlfriend have been dating for three years,” he says, out of the blue. “Can you imagine that? That seems like such a long time.”

“My longest relationship was six months,” you tell him, as you reach the exits and pull him along, to the coffee shop on the corner, and you wait in line with other students.

“Six months!” he exclaims. “Half a year. I can’t - I can’t _focus_ for that long. I’m always falling in love. I guess it’s my fatal flaw.”

“It’s not a bad thing,” you mumble.

“Are you dating anyone right now?” he asks.

“I haven’t dated anyone in a while.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Me, neither.” His voice darkens for a moment, like someone dimmed him down with a light switch. “My last boyfriend was kind of a dick, so I gave up for a bit.”

“That sucks,” you say. You place your order for coffee and he follows, and you offer to pay. He beams at you. “I have it on record that I am usually the one who’s being a dick in the relationship, with a boy _or_ with a girl.”

“I don’t know,” he says, finally unthreading his arm from yours to pick up your coffees at the end of the counter. He hands you your order. Your fingers brush against each other. “You seem nice to me.”

.

You dated a girl in your sophomore year of high school. You asked her to homecoming, and she said yes. She was the kind of girl your Dad would call a “nice girl”: she had long, straight hair and pretty eyes, made decent grades, and volunteered at church. You held hands in the hallway; you kissed before class; you bought her ice cream after school. Six months into the relationship, you thought falling in love would be more exciting.

Where were the long nights losing sleep because you were too busy texting each other? Where were the racing hearts, the physical yearnings? Six months into the relationship, she approached you in the hallway and demanded, “What’s wrong with you? Why are you ignoring me?”

And you realized it had been two weeks since you last kissed, that you had not thought of her past how nice those jeans looked on her, how maybe she should think about getting her hair cut soon.

“I’m not ignoring you,” you told her, because you hadn’t meant to, and people were staring. “I’ve been busy. I’m sorry.”

“Liar,” she said. “You’re such a liar!” and she pushed at your shoulders and stormed away, back to her group of friends, where they whispered about you. “You don’t even care.”

You slammed your locker shut. One-and-oh.

.

Daehyun communicates in touches. He is tactile and wants to be held. You learn this quickly; it is hard not to.

Everything about him is loud, up for consumption, but it is you who are consumed.

He cannot do things by halves. Once, you work on a project together for your shared class and you wake up the next day and Daehyun has sent you a long, intricately-worded email at four in the morning, and he has completed it. He is sorry. He didn’t know how to stop. You buy him lunch for nearly a week to thank him, and you learn he loves spicy food that makes his eyes water.

You hear him sing when you and your friends go out for room-karaoke. He loses himself in the song, gets emotional over harmonies, begs you to sing with him. He clutches at your elbow, and you sing with your arm around his waist and he breathes, after it is over, face glowing, turning to you.

You think that is when anyone else would have kissed him.

You say, instead, “Can I pick the next song?”

If he’s disappointed, he doesn’t show it. He grins and your friends beg you both to sing a popular duet. “No sappy love songs,” he says.

.

The dorm room is small. You all have to keep the noise level down, or the RA will come by and knock on the door, and all your alcohol will be confiscated. There are people you have only met tonight in Amber’s room, laughing. There’s a game of Kings on the floor, and a small group gathered around a laptop screen. She sidles up next to you where you are gaming on your phone in her desk chair, and respectfully waits for you to complete a level before speaking.

Daehyun is cross-legged on her roommate’s bed. There’s a guitar in his lap. There’s an upperclassmen adjusting Daehyun’s fingers along the frets as Daehyun attempts to strum, and they laugh. The chord sounds all wrong. Daehyun’s face breaks into a smile. His hair is silver. His teeth are white.

“You’re staring,” Amber says softly.

“I’m not,” you tell her.

“He’d say yes,” she assures you.

“He says yes to everything.”

She frowns, shakes her head. “Not everything.”

.

He cannot do things by halves, so he drinks until he is on the verge of passing out.

It’s winter verging on spring, and he has on a tight leather jacket that slips against your coat as you struggle with his jelly-like balance down the hallway to your dorm room.

“Fuck,” he says, after the third time he nearly trips over his own feet. “I’m sorry. I’m so drunk. How did that happen?”

“It was probably the shots you took with Amber,” you say. You’re not doing so well yourself. You dig through all of your pockets for your keycard before you remember that it’s in your messenger bag, somewhere. You prop him against the wall by your door, and he slides down to the floor, hugging his knees, groaning.

“Tequila!” he bemoans, like a man who has lost a battle.

When you get the door open, you bend down to maneuver him into your room, and you thank heaven or whatever is out there that your roommate is gone for the weekend. Daehyun falls inside, and collapses at the foot of your bed, against one of the legs.

He wriggles out of his jacket. You wriggle out of yours.

“You’re too good to me,” he slurs.

“Yeah, yeah,” you say, toeing off your shoes. You notice he is trying to peel off his own boots. You pad over to your dresser and rummage around in the drawers for some shirts to sleep in. “You’re just happy I dragged your sorry ass to a bed and didn’t leave you on a bench somewhere.”

“Worse things have happened,” he says. “I mean it - You’re so amazing, and smart, and pretty.”

Even with your drunken flush, you feel your cheeks heating still. You toss a shirt at his head and he whines at you. “You should change,” you say.

“Help me.”

You change and then you help him. You help him shimmy out of his jeans. You help him loop his arms through the right holes of the shirt. You guide him down to the bed. His legs are bare and your legs are bare and it feels good when you lay beside him and they brush together.

His skin is hot, and dry, and he looks up at you from under your arm and says, “Can I kiss you?”

And you don’t see why not. “Sure,” you tell him, and he kisses you, and his lips are everything you thought they would be - soft and plump and electric. And this is hooking up. This, you understand.

In your haze you think maybe he understands, too, and you are careful with him; you want to make it feel good. His lips are a dream.

In the morning he won’t emerge from the covers. “I’m so embarrassed,” he says, voice muffled and raspy. “My head hurts. Oh, I’m never going to leave this bed.”

“But it’s my bed,” you remind him. You try to smile but you are worried; hookups don’t tend to resolve like this. Hookups resolve with both parties walking away, no strings attached; but Daehyun is your friend. You realize, you don’t want him to walk away.

Daehyun rolls around under your covers and groans and kicks his legs as you change into a fresh shirt and pull on jeans, and as you run a hand through your hair to make it settle. You put on your glasses. “Let’s just get some coffee,” you say tentatively. “Come on - it’s not a big deal. It was fine, right? I mean - I liked it.”

You cringe after you say the words, though he stills.

A pause.

He says, slowly, “I guess - that’s. Fine.”

Your heart suddenly jumps in your chest, and it feels like someone is squeezing it. He sounds different. You don’t want him to walk away. _You don’t want him to walk away._

He changes into his shirt from last night and you swallow around the lump in your throat as he tugs his jeans back onto his hips, a bruise on his thigh disappearing from view. You left it there. You think you left it there.

You both stumble to the coffee shop around the corner, and then you stumble into the little square park, and find an empty bench in the chill air. He slides to sit right next to you, and you think that is good. His body is warm. He sighs, sips his coffee.

“Was that weird?” he asks you. “Did I make it weird, between us, now?”

“It doesn’t have to be weird,” you say, hoping.

“I don’t know how to control myself,” he says miserably. “I’m sorry. But at least you had fun?”

“It doesn’t have to be weird,” you say again. “Come on, stop that. It was good. It was good for you, too, right?”

“We can still be friends, right?” he asks, his voice small. “Right?”

“Of course,” you tell him, and it takes a moment, but then he bumps his shoulder into yours, smiling.

.


	2. Chapter 2

You and Daehyun drift sophomore year, but it’s akin to the lazy kind of drifting that happens when you spend time at your parents’ lake house, sleeping in the sun as the raft floats and moves, inch by inch. Before you know it, you’re in the middle of the lake; before you know it, it’s the middle of the year and you have a part-time job at the college’s radio station and Daehyun is again only in one of your classes because you decided to cram all your core requirements into this year and he decided to forge ahead in the performance music department.

He works, too. You see each other at parties; he falls asleep on your shoulder in class; you get coffee after and he hooks elbows with you and laughs about something, and sometimes you sleep with each other, if the mood strikes, if he’s over and homework and papers are frustrating the both of you, if you’re over and he’s loosened up with beer.

You learn his body and he learns yours, but after, he treats you the same way he treats everyone else - he holds Amber’s hand when they walk to class; he kisses Baekhyun on the cheek when they see each other; he reaches and is received, always, by someone.

You take comfort in that. No sappy love songs, you remember. Daehyun is your friend - maybe even your best friend - and his lips are a dream.

Junhong works with you, at the radio. He is tall and gangly and pale, shy around strangers, though he seemed to open up to you quickly, in the weeks that you have known him. He hands you an iced coffee from the deli downstairs. “They put milk in it,” he mumbles. “I told them not to but it was too late.”

“It’s fine,” you say, smiling. “Thanks.”

Your fingers brush and he grins, cheeks turning rosy, as you put the straw to your lips.

You are sorting records. The radio station has you and Junhong on a year-long project to overhaul their inventory, to sort and archive record upon record upon record. It’s a nice, mindless job, though you hope next year, the station won’t have you doing the same thing.

“What are you doing after work?” Junhong asks you, biting his lip. He looks up at you from under his fringe, even though he is so much taller. You are working on opposite sides of a long table where you have brought down boxes upon boxes of old records. You slide out a sleeve that is dusty, the name of the band on it faded.

“I don’t know,” you say. “Daehyun will probably want to get drinks.”

“You guys drink a lot,” he says, wrinkling his nose.

“Maybe relative to _you_ ,” you say pointedly, and he laughs. Junhong is a freshman. He’s been straight-laced and goodie-goodie all his life and balked the first time you told him about a party you went to some time ago. “It’s not a big deal.”

You shrug.

Junhong fiddles his fingers over the records standing cramped against each other in the boxes. He clears his throat a few times, and sips his own iced coffee, practically half-cream, all sugar. “If you’re not doing anything, let’s get dinner?”

You stop. His eyes are focused on your coffee on the table, on the condensation dripping down the sides and onto the flat surface. He bites his bottom lip. “Sure,” you say. “Did you have any place in mind?”

He shakes his head, tension rolling out of his shoulders. As you watch, he ducks his face and grins, hiding it, and starts sorting again. “Nah, I’ll eat pretty much anything, so why don’t you pick?”

You say, “There’s this new Thai place we’ve been meaning to try,” and for a moment you wish you could take it back. Daehyun had been looking forward to finding a time for the two of you to try it together. But it’s just a restaurant, after all, and Thai food is delicious.

“That sounds good,” Junhong replies, nodding. He’s still grinning, just a little, like a smile that has faded and left an imprint.

.

You take him out to dinner, or maybe he takes you out, a couple of times, a couple more times. Junhong seems so young, and he is a particular kind of beautiful, but no matter how many dinners you have with him, there is no spark.

He’s an interesting guy. You like him. You try to be a bit like Daehyun, to show it, because you know you come off as detached and remote sometimes, so you are generous with your touches, and he in turn is generous with his.

Junhong doesn’t have a fake and has no plan to get one, but you do, so you order yourself a beer and nurse it through dinner, and it opens you up just a little, makes you looser with your tongue and hands.

After dessert, you are stuffed, and you pay for everything while he excuses himself to the bathroom, and when he comes back to sit down his eyes are darker than usual, and maybe it’s dangerous, but he walks you home, back to your dorms.

You hiccup, standing outside of your building, and scan the windows for what you know to be Daehyun’s room. The lights are off. Disappointment settles in your stomach.

Junhong says, “Is your roommate in tonight?”

You have to think about it. You remember he’d mentioned going back upstate to visit his parents for the weekend, so you shake your head, turning back to him. “Nope.”

Junhong steps closer to you, in front of you, your chests now barely a fist apart, and then he winds his fingers into your fingers in one hand. “Do you wanna…?” he says, trailing off and blushing, looking down and away and bouncing his knee a bit.

“Do I want to what?” you ask him, because you kind of want to go upstairs and catch up on this episode you missed over the week, and maybe you can bother Daehyun if he’s already asleep to wake up and watch it with you.

“Go...to your room?” Junhong says hesitantly, and you realize suddenly that you’ve been doing this all wrong.

You like him, but you don’t _like_ him.

Junhong’s cheeks are red, so red, like they’ve been pinched, and he is finally looking at you with wide, unblinking eyes, and he is at once determined and terrified, so earnest, and you’ve been doing this all wrong.

You can’t do it. You can’t invite him up and start this chain reaction, because you know exactly how it will go:

A couple of weeks together. A couple of dates. You will get distracted, by something, by anything, and you will disappoint him, hurt him. ( _Why don’t you care?_ is a hissed phrase tattooed across your mind.)

“Oh,” you say, sighing, letting his fingers go. His hand falls back to his side, stiff, and he swallows. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” you say.

“Oh,” he says, stunned. You watch his face fall. You’ve hurt him, anyway. “Oh, okay.”

“I just,” you start, attempting to salvage something from the wreckage. “I like you, but not like that. Let’s just be friends?”

He says, “I don’t think I can do that.”

He shudders a little when he breathes, and you don’t know what to do. You bite into your lip and clench your fists and wish you could beat them against your chest, beat some feeling into your heart.

Maybe that’s what it needs - to break, to fall apart, and then to heal. But you think, even then, there will be something missing.

.

Your parents call. They always ask about the same things: school, dating, and money.

They tell you they’re depositing more money into your account. They ask you if you have a girlfriend yet.

“There was that Cindy girl, right?” your Dad asks you. “Weren’t you seeing that Cindy girl? She was nice.”

“Dad,” you say. “That was, like, back in high school.”

“Oh. You’re not seeing her anymore?”

“No.”

“That’s too bad. She was nice.”

You don’t know how to tell them you have had boyfriends, too, if you can even call them boyfriends. You don’t know how to tell them anything. Though you are across the continent it feels like nothing has changed between you and your family.

You have always felt - displaced.

.

You don’t really know why Daehyun even bothers coming to class, anymore. He always slips in, twenty minutes late, hair sleep-mussed and lips too red, and then he falls asleep ten minutes later, on Amber’s shoulder or on yours. Sometimes, he drools, but you allow it.

You don’t really party with him, lately. He’s a wild thing, unleashed, unmuzzled, and you have heard whispers.

How he sleeps around, how he drinks, how he’ll do anything for a price.

In class, though, with his head on your shoulder and his pink hair tickling your neck, he fits. He is just Daehyun, the same boy you met freshman year, with the cute accent and the endearing need to be touched. You run your fingers through his hair, and he sniffs, burrowing closer, snoring himself awake suddenly.

Amber chuckles and you glare at her, good-natured, while Daehyun rubs the last vestiges of sleep from his eyes.

“Good nap?” you whisper out of the corner of your mouth.

“Your shoulder is comfortable,” he drawls, blinking sluggishly. “I want to sleep there forever.”

“What about my shoulder?” Amber whispers.

“Second choice,” Daehyun teases. “Hold on, let me double check.” He lays his head on Amber’s shoulder and sighs, and you think he presses a kiss to her neck.

“Stop that,” she says, giggling. “Dae, Dae - I mean it.”

He whines, pulling back, but stops.

Under the desk, his knee is bouncing. After a moment, he crosses his arms and folds into himself, slumping. “Ugh,” he says, laying his cheek against the flat surface of the desk, eyelids fluttering shut. You run your fingers through his hair again.

“That feels nice,” he mutters. “Please don’t stop.”

.

Jaebum invites you to this blow out. It’s at an upperclassman’s swank apartment downtown, and it’s sort of like a graduation party.

“You have to come, man,” Jaebum pleads. “You never come out with me, anymore!”

So you go, after making sure that there will be other people you know, and you are reassured when Amber and Daehyun both say they’re planning on making it, and will definitely see him there.

So you go, and Jaebum pours you drink after drink, and the apartment is _huge_. There’s _space_ , and the layout is open, and there’s a spiral staircase connecting the main floor to a loft, and _another_ staircase going up to the smaller second floor. It’s the kind of apartment your parents would like to own in the city, if they were interested, though they stay busy enough with the lakehouse and a boat.

Somehow, you lose Jaebum.

This is okay.

A little bit ago, you think you remember seeing Daehyun’s pink hair as he and Amber swooped in. You think you remember his laugh. You think you remember how he’d tried to take a shot with you, only to be pulled away at the last moment by someone else, someone older. You remember guitars and fingers on frets.

This is okay, because there’s someone pressing you against the kitchen counter. She said you made a good drink. She licked her lips at you. It’s been a while since you kissed anyone, anyone other than Daehyun, so when she stepped in between your legs your hands settled around her narrow, slim waist, and you let her kiss you.

She pulls away, smiling. You blink and there are two of her. You blink again and it’s just one girl.

“I have to - check on a friend,” she slurs, stumbling. She trips out of the kitchen, unhurried and unfazed, and you bite your raw lips, and some boy knocks his fist into your shoulder.

“Nice,” he acknowledges with a nod of his head. “She was hot.”

“Sure,” you say, boredom striking you. You meander out of the kitchen, too, thinking you are probably done with drinking for the night, and that you should look for Jaebum. You pull your phone out of your pocket and squint at the screen as it flashes at you. It’s almost three in the morning.

Amber is playing with someone on the luxurious leather couch that takes up half of the living room. There’s a reality show playing on the television, the dialogue drowned out by music thumping in speakers hooked up to the owner’s laptop. She’s trying to tickle the person, you think. You get closer, and you see that it’s Baekhyun.

“I know all your vulnerable spots!” she shrieks, as Baekhyun tries to defend himself, but she’s crawling all over him, laughing, drunk, and eventually he falls against the cushions.

“Youngjae!” he calls out to you, seeing you. “Get this monster off of me!”

You walk over.

“Where’s Daehyun?”

Amber laughs, finally succeeding in straddling Baekhyun against the couch to pinch at his sides.

“I don’t know, man,” Baekhyun says with the air of the defeated. “He could be anywhere.”

That - that does not sound okay. You frown, and Baekhyun yelps, accidentally kneeing Amber in the ribs. “Sorry,” Baekhyun says, though Amber isn’t angry, and now they’re both laughing. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

“He’s probably with some guy,” Amber says. “You know how it is.”

You do, but you also don’t. You don’t know how they can be so nonchalant about the whole thing. Isn’t Daehyun their friend, too?

“I’m going to look for him,” you say, you promise.

He isn’t in the living room. He isn’t in the kitchen, either, or in the bedroom on the first floor, though you interrupt a couple trying to take clothes off each other in a way that’s sexy. You wait in line for the bathroom and when it gets to you, you think you might as well take a piss, but Daehyun’s not in the bathroom, either.

The spiral staircase is taped off, so you go up the other stairs, and here, on the second landing, the music is muffled, muted, like you’re underwater. It’s darker, too. Light drifts up from the first floor and throws long shadows into the hallway, and there are two doors. The first is locked. The second is ajar.

The smell of weed up here is strong - aromatic and clinging. You push the second door open farther and there’s a group of students just sitting around, on the bed, on the floor, passing around a small handheld vaporizer and breathing the drug in, exhaling it out.

“Shit,” someone says. “I thought you were the cops.”

Someone else laughs. “The cops! Ha ha. No way the cops would be bustin’ up anything around here.”

You don’t laugh, because you see Daehyun’s pink hair in the corner, where he is sitting and hugging his knees to his chest, against a dresser, shaking.

“Daehyun,” you say, but he doesn’t respond, just continues to shake.

Sobriety slams into you. You rush over to him as the people in the room start to move, start to fidget. Someone says, “Oh, shit. What’s wrong with him?”

“Daehyun,” you say, reaching him, and you lay a hand on his bare arm. It’s clammy.

“I’m cold,” he stutters, his teeth chattering. “It’s _freezing._ ”

“Daehyun, come on. Let’s get out of here.”

He lets you drag him up to his feet. You can tell he’s trying to help, but he sags when he stands, head dropping, eyes blinking slow and staying shut for longer and longer. “It’s cold,” he says again.

“Don’t pass out on me,” you say, alarmed by the coolness of his skin, how pale his cheeks are. You both stumble out of the room and when he sees the stairs he whimpers.

“No,” he says, turning his face into your chest. “Jaejaejae - I feel like I’m gonna die. Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.”

You hold him, rub his back, but it’s bad. It’s really bad. He says, “Oh, my god. What time is it? Where’s Amber? Did I - Did I come here with her?”

“Yeah,” you tell him, to reassure him. “Yeah. She’s fine. She’s with Baekhyun. She’ll be fine. We need to get you downstairs. We need to get you to the bathroom, Daehyun.”

“Why?” he says, and then his legs give out, and if you weren’t holding him he would have crashed into the floor and maybe down the steps, and your heart pounds in your chest. “Shit,” he murmurs against your belly. “Shit, Youngjae. Why am I like this?”

There is something there you don’t want to touch, something dark and deep-rooted and frightening. You just want to get him back downstairs, into the light, into a bathroom, where maybe he can vomit up all the alcohol that’s sitting in his belly, poisoning him.

You are scared for him. Daehyun clutches at you and your heart breaks, and you make it down, slowly, carefully.

“I’m a mess,” he cries. “I’m sorry. I’m always such a mess.”

“You’re not a mess,” you tell him, and by now you are both in the bathroom, and he is hovering over the toilet bowl, face wet from tears. He gags. You rub his shoulders, his back, as he heaves and empties his stomach.

.

In the morning you wonder why you let this happen. He’ll get the wrong idea. You both hadn’t stayed at the party too long after, and you’d taken a cab home with Daehyun, his weight pressed into your body as the car took its turns.

Daehyun is warm under the covers against your side, and curls against you, seeking more heat.

You turn away. You do not fall in love. You disappoint people with your distance; you disappoint yourself with it.

Daehyun’s fingers drag away from your skin, leaving ghost touches in their wake. 

He does not try to touch you again.

.

 


	3. Chapter 3

This year, Daehyun isn’t in any of your classes at all, and yet you see more of him, it seems; he is always over, taking up space on your bed, in your chair, stealing your hoodies. The summer was - something - to him.

He’s changed. Or, maybe he’s snapped back to who he used to be. You saw the pictures he posted of his trip back to South Korea, to be with his family - hiking with his old brother, grilling meat with his mother, staring out at the sea. He reminds you now of those old sepia-toned photographs. Subdued and warm and a little lost in time.

You ask him what he did, how it was, going back to Korea, and he says, “You know, it was cool and stuff. Mostly, I worked.”

You didn’t work at all. You didn’t have to. You spent your summer reading in your backyard by the pool, occasionally taking a dip, occasionally hanging out and connecting with old friends. Amber and her girlfriend visited you for a weekend when your parents were out of town and you all did it up in the city, but generally, summer passed quietly, and quickly.

The movie playing on your laptop is about to reach its climax. You’re sitting with your back against the wall on your bed, legs crossed, and Daehyun’s head is on your thigh, your fingers running through his soft honey-brown hair.

He says, “I don’t like this part,” and turns his body towards yours, towards the wall, until his face is pressed into your hip.

“Why? It’s the best part,” you say. You’ve seen the movie so many times you could recite it in your sleep.

He says, “It’s sappy.”

“I thought you liked things like this,” you say, wry, your lips twisted into a smirk.

Daehyun says, “It’s dumb,” and falls silent again, and you watch the climax on your own, and then you reach over and pause the movie. He sighs when you settle back into position. “I missed hanging out with you.”

“Yeah,” you say. “It was a long summer.”

“No. Even before that.”

But you think, you hung out plenty, all last year - you hooked up and played video games and went out for drinks and ate food together. You went to parties. You helped him get back home.

“What are you talking about?” you ask.

“I don’t know,” he says, his hand coming up to grasp the material of your shirt near your ribs. He asks now, before touching you, before there is any skin on skin. He used to, anyway, but now it is more deliberate. “Wanna get off?” he murmurs into your hip.

“Right now?”

He hums.

“Yeah, okay.”

“You can pull my hair,” he says, smiling as his hands make quick work of your sweats and boxers.

He likes when you take control. You remember how, the first time he spoke to you, you wanted to wrap your hands around his waist and press him into the ground.

.

It’s not like you spend all your time together. You have moments, apart. He has friends you don’t connect with and you have friends he is too much for, but your shared friends are your most dear, and you have them over often in the apartment your parents’ colleague is renting out to you, just sharing space together.

You open the cabinet in the kitchen and find Amber’s favorite tea on the shelf, or you find Baekhyun’s glasses on your coffee table. Daehyun, though, has seemed to weave himself into the very fabric of your life.

His extra toothbrush sits in a cup in your bathroom, his shirts have ended up in your laundry pile, and his laptop charger keeps getting left behind.

You don’t mind it. You like it, even. He comes over and you buzz him in and before you know it three hours have passed, and then you are cooking dinner together and he’s making a mess of your kitchen.

But sometimes when you are laughing together he will pause, suddenly, and just look at you, the way someone might look at their favorite painting, the way someone might look at the city from across the bridge - fond and yearning.

.

The waiter comes by to take everyone’s drink order and Amber says _blue moon_ and Baekhyun says _the dogfish head_ and you say _the leffe, please._ Daehyun says, “Can I just get some apple juice?”

The waiter smiles at him, at his order, as you hand over your menus.

Daehyun fidgets next to you on the bench when the waiter is gone with your drink and food orders, finally just sitting on his hands to keep them still, as Amber reaches over and tucks a loose lock of hair behind his ear. Your group has been seated in the corner of the small, railroad-style restaurant, and you and Daehyun sit adjacent with Amber and Baekhyun on the other side. It’s dim and dark and smells like fried food.

She says, “Oh, yeah. You’re doing that thing where you’re not drinking. _Snooze._ ”

“You only like me when I’m drunk,” Daehyun says petulantly when Baekhyun laughs. “I knew it.”

“That’s not true!” she says, pointing an accusatory finger. “Oh, boo hoo. It’s not your pity party. It’s not like anyone is telling you not to drink. It’s self-inflicted.”

Baekhyun adds, “I like you better when you’re drunk,” and Daehyun frowns. He’s only joking, of course, but Daehyun is still sitting on his hands and he chews on his lip as Baekhyun gets distracted because Amber suddenly wants to recap a story with him, and it turns into a loud, roiling conversation.

“I just want to see if I can do it,” Daehyun says under his breath, but you hear it; you are sitting close to him. There’s barely any space between you on the bench. You want to reach over and put your arm around his waist, but you are worried about touching him, now - worried about how he looks at you - so you hesitate.

You are not sure about the line you have created, in your own mind, between what is friendship and what is love. You are not sure if there should be a line. You are not sure if you _want_ there to be a line, with him, and it is frustrating and makes your head pound, thinking about it.

You say, “I think you’re doing really great,” and Daehyun seems to swell, bright and weightless like a paper lantern.

.

Jaebum’s left you again at another party. You think he’s probably hooking up with this girl he’s been flirting with for the past few weeks. There’s a drink in your hand that may be your third. The people here are the usual people - friends of friends, familiar faces. You wonder what Daehyun is up to, since pretty much everyone you think he hangs out with is here, in this tiny apartment with too many bodies crunched together in its space.

Someone spilled a jar of glitter onto the couch, and now almost everything is sparkling.

Amber has glitter on her cheeks as she pulls herself onto the couch next to you, snuggling up to your waist. “So,” she says, looking mischievous. “Daehyun?”

Your head is spinning and it’s hard to focus on her, especially with the music being so loud. “What?”

“Daehyun!” she says. “I thought you guys were a thing? Are you fucking around with him?”

She asks the last question with a sudden glare, like she is just realizing the capacity within you to be a hateful, hurtful person.

“No,” you slur. “I don’t think so.”

“You don’t _think_ so,” she repeats, grim. “What the hell does that mean?”

You’re not too sure, yourself.

You grapple with the line between loving and being in love.

You love Daehyun. He’s your best friend. You can’t imagine your life without him, now. If suddenly, one day, he did not return your calls, did not want to have dinner with you, did not want to be lazy in bed and watch an entire season of your favorite show, you would be gutted. And really, what’s the big difference between friend-love and love-love?

(But there is a difference. There is a gap that you cannot cross, that you cannot reconcile. He wants to kiss you. He wants to hold your hand. He wants --

You don’t know what it means, that he looks at you, and doesn’t always want to sleep with you, that he just wants to be near you. That he touches you just to touch you, that he calms and breathes easier when he’s next to you, or in your lap.

You think you don’t feel any of those things, and that is not fair to him, you tell yourself.)

“Youngjae,” Amber says, stern and very unlike her. “Youngjae, don’t you dare hurt him.”

“I won’t,” you tell her. “I won’t mean to.”

She probably doesn’t hear you. She’s already pushing herself off the couch, unsteady, and she nearly knocks your drink out of your hand in her attempt to stand. “Ah, where’s my darling Tiffany?”

And she is off.

You finish your drink and search for another.

.

You think about what love is - what you know of it, what you have learned. You have learned that being in love is like falling into a bottomless black hole and enjoying every moment of it. It is losing yourself in someone else. It is being drunk on someone, their touch, their laugh, the way their eyes crinkle up when they smile.

You are drunk.

The party rages on and you are drunk and you hate it, you hate thinking about it, and you want to go home.

Your phone is in your hand, against your ear. Daehyun’s voice is on the other end:

“Hey. Youngjae? Is everything okay?”

“Dae,” you say. Your mind forms the words but your lips are sloppy. “Daehyun, I want to go home. Let’s go home. Please take me home.”

“Where are you?” Daehyun says, clear and quick. “Are you still at the party? Is there anyone with you? I’ll be right there.”

“Yeah,” you say. “Yeah. I’m still here. I just - I want to leave. I don’t want to be here anymore.”

( _Without you_ , are the words you keep behind your teeth.)

“I’m coming,” Daehyun says, and you breathe out, pressing your forehead against the cool door of the refrigerator in this person’s kitchen. “Okay? I’m coming.”

.

Daehyun helps you into bed. By now the alcohol has flushed from your system, so all you are is tired, exhausted.

You swallow, your head hitting your pillow. Daehyun is taking off your shoes. You groan.

He says, "I'm going to get you some water," and you gasp, suddenly, because you do not want him to go, but you see how he looks at you, so you also don't want him to stay.

"Don't leave me," you mutter, anyway.

A hand against your forehead. Daehyun says, "Okay," and his hand travels down to your neck, and you hold onto it, onto him. Your body craves him, meaningless as that is.

You pull, and he falls, over you and into you, and you kiss him.

He lets you kiss him, even though he knows - he must realize - that the way you kiss and the way he kisses is not the same, that there isn't anything worthy behind your touches, that for you it is physical. It isn't fair.

You growl into his mouth, bite at his lips.

It isn't _fair_ \- can't he see that?

And yet he still reciprocates, still lets you into his mouth, into his vulnerable spots, and you feel anger.

Anger at him, for letting you get away with this, for wasting himself on you. Anger at yourself, for not being able to give him what he wants, though you want to.

You think, out of everyone you have ever kissed, you want to be in love with him the most.

But now you are angry as he gasps against you. It makes you rough, almost careless. “Is this okay?” you ask him, over and over as he slicks himself up, as you nip at his skin, because your hands are shaking and you can’t prep him yourself.

“Youngjae,” he breathes, no longer kissing you so much as dragging his hot, open mouth over your skin. “Yes, yes, _yes._ ”

He is sweet, sweet heat and tight pressure as you claim him, fold his body against yours.

.

“Dae,” you say. It is morning. The sun streams silver light through your blinds and Daehyun curls up against you and his skin is sleep-warm and smooth. He smells like strawberries. Your head is pounding and your mouth drier than cotton and the light pricks at your eyeballs.

Images of the previous night rush back into your mind, and you groan, ashamed and worried and sorry.

Daehyun sighs. “Yeah?”

“Did I hurt you?” you ask him, anxious to your pores, disgust at your actions - however well-received they were by him - making your stomach clench and roil.

“No,” he whispers. “You kept asking me that last night, too. It’s okay; I think - I like it like that.”

Still, you remember your anger and how receptive Daehyun was for it, like a vessel you could empty yourself into, and you think again how unfair it is, how you do not deserve anything or anyone like him.

“Dae, are you in love with me?”

Daehyun whines, slinging an arm over your torso. “Probably yes,” he says, pressing his lips to your neck.

Your heart is hammering in your chest and blood is rushing through your veins but you are frozen at the easy admission.

“ _How_?”

“You just mean a lot to me. I don't know. If I’m in love then I’m in love,” he says, nuzzling closer to you, and you want to scream, because that’s not enough. That’s not an answer. You want him to explain how it works, the intricacies of a romantic relationship, so you can pick it apart and teach yourself the way.

You say, “I’ve never fallen in love. I don’t think I’ll _ever_ fall in love,” and it is the biggest, more treasured and fragile secret you have ever told. You hold your breath after, feeling like the world has stopped, because you _don’t want him to walk away_.

He folds his arms over your chest and props himself up, his face inches from yours, heavy on top of you. He looks uncertain, swallowing and stilling, and you are sorry for the blankness in his eyes, the weight at the corners of his lips, the way he hunches his shoulders and blinks and shakes the fringe from his face, pulling himself together before - before _smiling_ , that soft kitten smile tucked into the corners of his lips.

“That’s okay,” he says. “It doesn’t mean someone can’t be in love with _you_. It doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to feel it from someone else,” and he doesn’t ask you why are you are the way you are, and you are hungover and your head hurts, and Daehyun is an utter, utter fool, and he is probably in love with you, and you are going to do whatever you can not to hurt him, ever.

.

Senior year, and you move in together.

Maybe you are not in love with him - not the way being in love is defined - but you circle around him and he circles around you. He smells like strawberries and doesn’t pick up his socks from the living room floor; he buys a big pot and a standing, portable burner and makes it a ritual to cook ramen together like that every once in a while, with your legs crossed and smoke furling between you two; he sleeps in his bed and you sleep in yours, but sometimes you share the couch, sometimes you let him take the space next to you on your creaky soft mattress, when he needs it, when you need it.

“Daehyun!” you call when you step into the apartment, the door swinging shut behind you. You take off your shoes, shift your bag. You have Chinese take out, and you ordered an extra fried rice just in case. “Dae, are you around?”

He emerges from his room, drawn out by the smell of grease. He looks soft in that hoodie. You think it is one of yours.

“Hey,” he says, rubbing at his eyes, scratching at his belly. He takes the food from you with a sleepy smile. “Welcome home, Youngjae.”

.

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you gave this a chance, thanks for reading. If you've made it all the way to the end, thanks for reading. Hope you enjoyed it and if you [have questions](ask.fm/andnowforyaya), I'd love to try to answer them, okay? :)
> 
>  
> 
> [writing](http://andnowforyaya.tumblr.com/)   
>  [twitter](https://twitter.com/andnowforyaya)


End file.
